Ultra Wide TVs (21x9)

[Shane Rollins]

As I sit here watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, I can’t help but wonder why we have ultra-wide gaming monitors but we don’t have ultra-wide TVs. While admittedly they would be a niche item, I’m sure a lot of people would buy them. Am I the only one who wants a true scope presentation for my 2.20:1 and greater content?

[Lee A Stewart]

Been there, done that . . . Phillips Cinema 21:9 Gold HDTV



https://www.hitechreview.com/tv/lcd/...ries-tv/30746/

[Shane Rollins]

Did that ever come out?

[Canada]

21:9 TV's did come out.

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by Canada

21:9 TV's did come out.

They died out. I kind of want one now. With the newer tech. Those "cinemascope" movies are so much farther away from me than 16:9 or academy ratio movies. I hated how they were almost all curved, though. The curve looked skewed to me at the store, no matter what distance I stood at.

[Geoff D]

I really liked having one of these, it was a Philips 56", can't remember the model. Trouble was the black response was so bad, it smeared terribly.

[The Valeyard]

I remember seeing 21:9 televisions on sale in Singapore back in 2010.

[bhampton]

This should be the next thing.

not 3D
not HDR Super Ultra processors that can boil your eyes with unnatural contrast but they run every frame through photoshop
not 8K



MOVIE SHAPE ! That's what I want.

Jaws should be bigger than Game of Thrones.

Lack of a direct view display that is 2.40:1 is the only thing keeping me using a projector instead of a TV.

I understand Samsung's The Wall can be configured for 2.40:1 but last time i checked that was still priced too high.

[CatBus]

You can add me to the list of people who wouldn't mind a good implementation of one of these.

If I recall the previous failed attempt correctly, manufacturers struggled to come up with reasons for people to buy them. It went something like:

You can do activity #1 on the left side, and activity #2 on the right side! (look at the ad in the second post) So they hooked deep into smart TV stuff, custom Netflix interfaces where you could browse in one pane and view in another pane, side-by-side mode instead of picture-in-picture. All of this stuff where they bent over backwards to light up all the pixels on the display with any content EXCEPT scope films. Watch two different re-runs of Happy Days at the exact same time!* And then somewhere on the bottom of page 39 in small print they mentioned you could also zoom/crop a scope film to fill the screen. So they buried the best feature of the display, hitched its fortunes to people clamoring for Smart TVs, and... [crickets]

With 4K media and 4K/8K scaling processors, surely the zoom & crop of a modern set would produce much better results than the 1080p generation.

* Okay, I exaggerate. They never said exactly this, but probably just because they didn't think of it.

[slimdude]

I remembered those TVs, they've came and went so fast that nobody knew they even exist.

[rdodolak]

Unfortunately, the television industry had already standardized on 16:9 so anything different would be an uphill battle.

[Pondosinatra]

They were made so you could watch Tarantino's Hateful Eight....the widest aspect ratio ever - for a film that 95% of the time takes place indoors in one room.

[BluBonnet]

The pillarboxing on 4:3 movies would be crazy!

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by Pondosinatra

They were made so you could watch Tarantino's Hateful Eight....the widest aspect ratio ever - for a film that 95% of the time takes place indoors in one room.

The previous super wide HDTVs were listed at 21:9 which comes out to 2.33. Just a hair below anamorphic widescreen (2.35/2.40)

Ultra Panavision 70/MGM Camera 65 has an aspect ratio of 2.76 so you would have black bars on the top and bottom (letterbox).

[chip75]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

The pillarboxing on 4:3 movies would be crazy!

I posted images in a thread a few years back, that's how it should be (if your 21:9 display is big enough it shouldn't be an issue), but then you bring IMAX into play and it throws things off.

It is a shame that we haven't had 21:9 4K displays, but I think due to the squashed nature of the ratio, if you had a 65'' display you'd be looking at around 1.5m of width (I'd imagine consumers would still want 55'', 65'' displays and see smaller sizes as "shrinking"). So you'd some healthy AV units/ wall space to accommodate them.

[Deciazulado]

I do wish there was a Scope shaped 85" curved 3D OLED, but for now I have my 65" 16:9 3D curvy on a sturdy wheeled stand to make the Scope movies "bigger" as I pull it 3/4ths closer.

[CatBus]

A possible application for rollable displays: normally it's 16:9, but switch it to ultrawide mode and the weird side bezels (containing extra rolled-up display) stretch it to 21:9. Higher end models come equipped with a Ben Hur mode. Turn the display off and it shrinks back down to 16:9. Or less.

Admittedly I'm talking about this like it's feasible, but as long as we're in wishlist mode.

[XavierTheaterPotato]

An Ultrawide TV can be possible. Problem is it'll be especially niche the way TVs are already. Like mentioned the Rollable TVs or even Samsung's the Wall can configure to that. But we already have problems with folks understanding 2.40 Aspect ratio on a 16x9 TV, I don't want to explain a 1.78 aspect ratio on a 21x9 TV. Even though I'd personally go for it since a majority of movies are in 2.40.

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Unfortunately, the television industry had already standardized on 16:9 so anything different would be an uphill battle.

Did these TVs have an option of scaling scope content like Blu-rays to use the whole width of the screen? If not it would be pretty useless.

[CatBus]

Originally Posted by singhcr

Did these TVs have an option of scaling scope content like Blu-rays to use the whole width of the screen? If not it would be pretty useless.

Yes, although they didn't feature that ability prominently enough in my opinion. They would take a scope film, which would be ~2.35:1 matted onto a 16:9 frame on disc, and zoom it, cropping the top and bottom (just the black bars for a scope film), so that it filled more or less the entire 21:9 frame. They wouldn't do it for every film, because obviously that would be bad -- you had to tell it to go into scope mode.

But then they also included many wackadoodle useless features trying to use that screen real estate.